Synology launches lower cost NAS with DS1817 and DS1517

Storage solutions company Synology has released ‘value’ versions of two of its recent NAS systems that use lower spec processors, less RAM and which have less comprehensive software packages. The Disk Station DS1817 and DS1517 are slightly scaled back alternatives to the DS1817+ and DS1517+ devices.

Technical differences include the use of 32-bit 1.7GHz Annapurna CPUs instead of the Intel Atom 64-bit 2.4GHz processors of the ‘+’ models, as well as 2GB (DS1517) and 4GB (DS1817) of RAM instead of up to 8GB. The DS1517 has no expandable memory options, while the DS1817 has built in 10GbE instead of the option to run with 10GbE or M.2 SSD cache like the DS1817+. As standard the DS1817 offers sequential throughput of up to 1,577 MB/s reading and 739 MB/s writing, while the DS1517 can manage reading throughput of up to 436.32 MB/s and writing throughput over 449.69 MB/s.

The DS1517 offers 5 drive bays and the DS1817 has eight, but both can couple with two DX517 expansion units which can hold a further five drives each. The maximum capacity of the DS1517 is 50TB, or 150TB when the two DX517 units capacity is included, while the DS1817 can manage 80TB, or 180TB with the DX517s .

The company says that the biggest differences between the value units and the ‘+’ units is the software packages that come with them. The value DS1817 and DS1517 come with fewer business applications and a more limited compatibility with certain file types.

Synology® Introduces DiskStation DS1517 and DS1817

Synology® Inc. launched the new DiskStation DS1517 and DS1817, powerful and scalable 5-bay and 8-bay desktop NAS. DS1817 is the first Value series equipped with built-in 10GbE LAN ports and an expandable RAM module, delivering future-proof, high-speed storage for professionals and growing small/medium-sized businesses.

DS1817 is powered by a quad-core 1.7GHz processor with RAM module expandable up to 8GB. Thanks to the built-in 10GbE interfaces, DS1817 can achieve outstanding sequential throughput performance exceeding 1,577 MB/s reading and 739 MB/s writing when using RAID 5. The built-in 10GBASE-T ports and 1GBASE-T LAN ports pave the way for businesses to upgrade to a 10GbE environment, and provide the support of Link Aggregation and failover.

"Growing small and medium-sized businesses expect a cost-effective storage solution that is versatile and expandable for their future demands, while minimizing the initial investment required," said Katarina Shao, Product Manager at Synology Inc. "The DS1517 and DS1817 are engineered to fulfill such needs, and provides the high performance and flexible scalability to manage, protect, and share data at work."

Both DS1517 and DS1817 can be scaled up to a raw capacity of 150TB and 180TB respectively with two DX517 expansion units. DS1517 and DS1817 support Synology High Availability (SHA), providing redundancy in case of unexpected network failure or disasters, and ensuring seamless transition between clustered servers. Moreover, DS1817 provides storage solutions for virtualization environments with VMware®, Citrix®, and Microsoft Hyper-V® certificates.

DS1517 and DS1817 run with DiskStation Manager (DSM) 6.1, the powerful and intuitive operating system for Synology NAS devices. Featuring a wide range of applications to bring better productivity at intensive work, DS1517 and DS1817 can serve as a centralized data backup destination. Synology has received numerous media accolades, such as topping the mid-range NAS category in TechTarget's storage solution survey.

DS1517 and DS1817 are backed by a limited 3-year hardware warranty. An additional extended warranty option is available in select regions for up to five years of coverage.

Comments

@iainlea I understand the value of a Nas. I have a Nas. I'm just saying I don't get why this Nas press release is being covered here. There are so many of these on the market - we don't need to hear about every launch.

I have a hard time understanding ppl saying NAS is overkill for home use.(These for sure are, though)Most homes have more than one PC. As a storage and backup solution they make perfect sense to me, and pricing starts well below $100 + disks for a 2-3 disk solution, and double that for a 4 disk solution.

I think the people saying it's overkill for *them* (not for home use in general) are single or single system homes... I have a desktop, plenty of drive space in it, even if I had a laptop I'd just use some sorta docking station... It'd be faster to access either way, cheaper, and easier to manage. Now for families and anybody that's managing 3+ PCs then yeah, a NAS makes a ton of sense IMO.

I have hard time with generic statements such as this one: "NAS is overkill for home use". Why don't you just say, "it is overkill for YOUR use"? Sometime around 10th external hard drive, I decided that it is enough swapping cables, monkeying around with USB hubs, and labeling hard drives. Synology has been working non-stop for over a year now and has not complained once.

In addition to the cloud storage, I'm quite happy with my two, simple, 6TB, USB 3.0, External drives. I had looked at NAS systems, a while back, and decided against them.For the cloud I use Degoo (a Swedish company) for most of my cloud storage.They give 100GB of free cloud storage, which is quite generous (link below), but you can buy as much more as you need; not a bad offer to try them out:https://degoo.com/g/IbJT56H

I have used Degoo for the past year, and I have never encountered any down time.

NAS really start to make sense if you're collaborating or just sharing content (work teams, families, etc), or if you just have loads of content (namely video, 4K in particular)... As a single user I'm sticking with a couple of externals myself and a cloud solution for off site redundancy.

Laptop users are the other common scenario for NAS... Since most of their storage will be external to begin with which means two disks right off the bat, I'm still clinging to my desktop and probably always will as long as it makes sense to build my own.

I use both, a desktop and a laptop, and whichever I'm using can connect to the external drive (even simultaneously),,I just built my 10th generation desktop using a 14-core Intel Xeon. I absolutely love the machine!I think it is faster than my first machine that I built in the 80s while in college, which had a processor running at a whopping 4.7 MHz :)

Btw: The hard disks will cost you at least as much as the NAS itself. E.g. a 4GB HDD made for NAS will cost you about 140 € here in Germany, that's 700 € for all 5 disks! At the end, the price difference is negligible.

We run all of our services on Synology gear. Main NAS box is a ds3615xs packed with 6TB disks and a 512GB SSD cache maxed out with 2x 10Gbe fiber connections.

We spent a lot of time benchmarking this new setup before we consolidated our older ds15xx+ systems (now used as offsite DR systems) so would be very interested to see how these lowend systems with slower CPUs and less RAM perform delivering data via a 10Gbe connection.

The short answer will be that unless you are using the newest SATA NAS disks (150-200MB/s) and the 18xx 8 disk Model (more spindles!) and doing "single user" reads and writes of your data the throughput performance will not be good (slight understatement).

Summary: in the real-world these systems will struggle to fill and keep filled a 10Gbe connection. Another point to bear in mind is that a slower CPU means that rebuilding a failed disk in a RAID array will take longer at which point you need to ask how valuable is your data.

NAS are for home and small office that do simple word or photoshop, simple photo and lite document. Every work place I been at (architecture) we use some rack server. Huge 3d files file in real time and raid. Corporate hardware are design to last as 10-100 people lost time per hour is big money.

I have like 3 computers, 2 tablets a few phones, 1 PS4 and PS3 that I use a 5 bay NAS server at home (different brand). So I can play music, video, look at photo from a central server. Also work from the same files/ document on different computers.

This is why lightroom bugs me. I even asked them if I can save my library on the server for future update, so I can work from any computer and they said no. This is because most photographers work from a single computer and the file are attached to that computer.

I'm still not sure how a NAS benefits a home user more than just using a shared folder and built in windows sharing on an always on PC.

I have a pretty powerful machine which is running 24/7... my photos, videos, and music are all located on internal drives, shared and accessible from anywhere in my house. I use IMatch anywhere to view my photo collection on my TV, tablet, etc. I use Windows built in server to view videos the same way and my music is available via a simple server too.

yes you can make your pc as a server (that is how most people did early on, I did too), but NAS consume much less power. It uses a lower power cpu, no graphic card, and a simple MB (mother board). A NAS on 24/7, 365 days a year for 10 years will waste less power then a power hungry cpu by a huge amount. If wasting energy isn't an issues then yes it is a same thing. It is quieter and product less heat, as it draw less power. I believe in saving the earth anyway I can. I turn all my pc off at home and at work, except for my NAS and wifi Ethernet internet router.

@fuego6 - I am a photographer with a rental studio as well.6x Webservers, Email, Home dirs and all our images since 1995 are on the system in raw and various jpg sizes all controlled and admined via an image database I developed as I need todo numerous things ie. all images for customer X and Mua Y with Brand Z (and NO #tags do not work for this level of granularity). The DB which runs blazeningly fast on the 3615 (and was fast enough on the old 15xx NAS) also does all our auto-posting to various social platforms we are present on ie. fb, insta, twitter, tumblr, flickr etc etc. (btw. our auto-poster solution is available to anyone who wants to reduce the time they need to spend on social media... send me a pm). Usually 2-3 concurrent users. We went with a 10Gbe system to reduce the read/write times when editing large files (4-5x quicker)... and we are experimenting serving PS scratch disks via 10Gbe connection as 600MB/s is as fast as a normal SATA attached SSD.

@ianlea - interesting.. thx for sharing your setup - figured it must be a business for that hardware setup.

@Spectro - makes sense.. but I keep my system running all the time because I often connect remotely and use it as a mini-server to host data for TV's and other media items in the house (when I'm not using it as my main workstation). The energy footprint from it is pretty small compared to so many other "vampire" devices I have in my home.. Tivo's, DVR's, TV's, Fridges, etc... sad as I too would love to help reduce my footprint - but I help out in other ways.

The 32 vs 64bit architecture doesn't make much of a difference for most people. It's the fact that the Annapurna cpu is an ARM processor vs the intel which is x86. This make a huge difference because apps have to be written for either. ARM is much more limited in apps, it has nothing to do with business apps are mentioned on this review, the app store is far more limited in general.

However, most photographers probably won't care about apps. They just want a huge file server with raid redundancy incase a drive fails. Both will be fast, and either will do the job just fine.

Actually 4k video takes up a huge amount of room. You need something like this if you're a videographer or belong to a group of photographers/videographers who collaborate on a project together. You would all access the NAS.

Also I use it for long term storage of my photos. Raws tend to add up very quickly, and the laptop only has so much room.

@Stefan Wrobel - if you have ever had a memory card or harddisk fail you will immediately appreciate what a NAS system can do.

Allows you to consolidate your data to a central server in your network that can then be accessed from unix, apple and windows. If a disk fails just pull it out and replace it with a new disk that will automatically rebuild itself (obviously you need to have configured the synology to use RAID 5/6/x etc.)

A NAS is an investment to protect your data. Once you understand the value of that you will never use single onboard/in-system disks again.

I use dropbox as a backup for my home photos. You can get 1TB per year for very good money, much cheaper than a NAS and its resistant to fire / theft etc. I think cloud is going to be a better balance than NAS for most home users, and it gives a sense of invulnerability that no amount of hard disks in your home can give you!

Goodmeme - I kinda agree... for the average home user - a NAS is a bit overkill. The cheaper units are severely underpowered, they are often very slow even on a wired home network and most users have no idea how they work.

For a home user, the cloud might be a better solution - at least for backup solution. The NAS sounds fancy - but you need to spend the $$$ for fast drives and fast hardware to take advantage of things like photo servers, FTP severs, media centers, etc.

Fast drives aren't enough: compared to a Thunderbolt attached "DAS", a NAS will suffer speed-wise no matter what you put in it. The only exception may be a NAS with 10Gig ethernet talking to a PC/Mac with 10gig as well and 10gig switches in between. But in that case you are talking about a lot of expense and if you don't have multiple users hitting it, I have a hard time justifying it.

Not saying NAS don't have their place, they absolutely do in multi-user environments..... But for the solo photographer I'm still a DAS guy.

I agree, they make a ton of sense for work teams, families, and environments with lots of laptops... Because keeping 2+ external drives per system for storage+backup just gets messy... They're kinda overhyped by some enthusiasts tho.

For single user scenarios and particularly desktop users that don't need a ton of storage (4K video etc), a category I'm in too, I'd rather just keep it local and directly attached... Faster, cheaper, and a cloud service is good enough for off site redundancy.

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